Urban planning based on watersheds: From theoretical debate to municipal management

Abstract

Debates related to the conservation and preservation of water resources has become recurrent in urban studies, focusing on an urban development compatible with maintaining the quality and control of water use. The overlap of these goals, transformed into an instrument of municipal management is the challenge of Municipal Plans for Water Resources (PMRH), which started to be developed in the state of Paraná since 2008. In this context, public managers face a series of challenges in order to develop a system that consistently balize public actions. This papers seeks to present the experience of PMRH in Rio Negro (PR), in which we developed an analytical instrument, adapting the evaluation variables required to the restricted capacity of municipalities in collect and process environmental data. The final objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a municipal systematic monitoring, with watershed as a planning unit.